Engineering Outreach – Partner with the Media

A primary goal of our Society is building support for the civil engineering profession through public awareness and understanding. In this blog, we’ve shared many ideas on how to spotlight our Report Card, awards program, high school engineering club, and other products/events to generate public interest. The ideas keep coming.

The ASCE Philadelphia Section (celebrating its centennial this year) partnered with their local newspaper to build awareness. In an article on their section website they detail their effort. “The Philadelphia Section was one of 15 technical societies in our region that participated in the ‘Newspapers in Education”‘ program. This Philadelphia Inquirer program creates newspaper supplements highlighting different professions, and distributes them to over 40,000 students throughout the region. The newspaper supplements are created with students in mind, and are used by teachers to bring real-world information into the classroom. Special thanks to the Engineers’ Club of Philadelphia who administered the engineering newspaper supplement. They deserve a lot of credit for organizing this successful engineering outreach publication. Thanks also to our Younger Member Forum for providing the Section’s submission for the publication.”

Take a look at the supplement and see if it could be used as a model for your local newspaper. Contact the editor and offer to help organize a similar special edition in their paper. You’ll increase awareness in the community and help local schools bring the “E” in STEM education alive.

What engineering profession was best represented in the supplement? Can you think of different aspects of civil engineering to feature?